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The Man Who Could Work Miracles (Lothar Mendes + Alexander Korda, 1936)
Jun
15
fruit
“As I want it, so it will be!”
– George McWhirter Fotheringay
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Kid 'N' Hollywood [Kid in Hollywood] (Charles Lamont, 1933)
Jun
12
Child Labor Day
A movie set on a movie set in Kid 'N' Hollywood. Shirley Temple can be seen on her knees scrubbing the floor as the character Morelegs Sweettrick. Standing next to her with a bullhorn and adult spats is Arthur J. Maskery as the tyrannical movie director Frightwig von Stumblebum. As in all the Baby Burlesk shorts, the kids are only half-dressed with their diapers showing.
Despite Shirley Temple's clear statements of what was going on on set during her child actress days, her output remains wildly popular. Who cannot resist her precocious lines, her cute dimples and baby doll innocence? And tapdancing with ánd befriending a Negro, during the segregation years? Miss Shirley truly was wise beyond her tender age.
“This isn’t playtime, kids, it’s work.”
– Charles Lamont, Baby Burlesk director
In the Baby Burlesk Kid 'N' Hollywood, Temple plays a Hollywood hopeful called Morelegs Sweettrick, who gets her break when the star doesn't feel like showing up (kids, right? no discipline).
While Kid 'N' Hollywood is relatively innocent, others in the series are much more sexualised (War Babies (1932) stars Temple as prostitute Charmaine) or plain racist (Kid 'in' Africa (1933) with Temple as Madame Cradlebait, bringing civilisation to Black kids portraying fearsome cannibals).
I'm not the one to take events from the past out of context and apply modern-day sensibilities to them, and with the advent of #ChildLabor laws for #Hollywood child actors, many of the horrors recalled by Temple and her peers are history. School is mandatory, long hours restricted, and using twins to split the workload is definitely not unheard of.
And then I watched teevee, and saw chubby, precocious blondes with dental plates to hide their missing baby teeth, wearing lipstick and baby-dolls, grinding and crooning with no backup in sight. And I remember Miss Temple say:
“Any star can be devoured by human adoration, sparkle by sparkle.”
– Shirley Temple
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A Midsummer Night's Dream (William Dieterle + Max Reinhardt, 1935)
Jun
10
Superman Week
Oberon (Victor Jory) – King of the Fairies – on his horse with Puck (Mickey Rooney) – a trickster sprite. While they ride of, Oberon's cape flows behind them through the trees, supported by the fae. A lot of the other-worldly fairy sparkle was accomplished by generous amounts of DuPont® cellophane and cinematographer Hal Mohr's contribution of trimming the trees with aluminium paint, cobwebs, and small metal particles. DP: Hal Mohr.
Capes, cloaks, and mantles are everywhere in Dieterle and Reinhardt's lavishly outfitted A Midsummer Night's Dream. The dreamlike #CostumeDesign by Max Rée and the uncredited Milo Anderson is as much as a personality as #Shakespeare's characters are.
“Now, until the break of day,
Through this house each fairy stray…”
Any reports of Kenneth Anger's presence as the Changeling Prince are greatly exaggerated.
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May
15
National Nylon Stocking Day
Nan Prescott (Joan Blondell), semi-dressed, slipping on – then off – her suspender. DP: George Barnes.
Legs legs legs and then some! While Miss Bitc… err Rich (Claire Dodd) chats with Nan's boss Chester Kent (James Cagney), Nan (Joan #Blondell) absent-mindedly puts on two #stockings on one (lovely) leg, removes it, then slips it onto the other.
“Meow!”
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May
9
Teacher Appreciation Day
Manuela (Hertha Thiele) in her Don Carlos costume with her beloved teacher, Frl. Von Bernburg (Dorothea Wieck). Note the similarity with Garbo vehicle Queen Christina (Rouben Mamoulian, 1933). DPs: Reimar Kuntze & Franz Weihmayr.
“What you call sin, I call the great spirit of love, which takes a thousand forms.”
– Fräulein Von Bernburg
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Der ewige Jude [The Eternal Jew] (Fritz Hippler, 1940)
Apr
4
World Rat Day
Nazi propaganda postcard advertising an exhibition in the library of the Deutsche Museum in Munich called Der ewige Jude: Große politische Schau (“The Eternal Jew: Great Political Exhibition”). The front of the card is a reproduction of the film poster. The card is dated 1937, which is at odds with the information in this blogpost. DPs: A. Endrejat, Anton Haffner, R. Hartmann, F.C. Heeve, Heinz Kluth, Erich Stoll & H. Winterfeld.
I took a long time considering what to nominate for today's topic. This is not an easy one. And frankly, barely qualifies as as film.
In the 1930s, three films (2 British, 1 American) portrayed Jews in a positive light, as victims of persecution through history. When in 1938 the Novemberpogrome took place in (Nazi-occupied) Germany (the term “Kristallnacht” is a horrible euphemism and I won't use it), media was not unanimously jubilant about it. Understanding that violence is not the way to popular consensus, plans were made to change people's thinking about the Jews, using widely available visual media.
In 1939, the faux #documentary Der ewige Jude, directed by the leader of Goebbels' #propaganda film department Fritz Hippler, started production. Scenes shot in Jewish ghettos in occupied Poland were intercut with real, but out-of-context documentary footage, giving it a false sense of authenticity./
“Where rats turn up, they spread diseases and carry extermination into the land. They are cunning, cowardly and cruel, they travel in large packs, exactly the way the Jews infect the races of the world.”
– narrator
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Het kwade oog [Le mauvais oeil / The Evil Eye] (Charles Dekeukeleire, 1937)
Feb
4
Farmers Day
A farmer in the bottom of the screen holding a scythe against an imposing Flemish sky. DP: François Rents.
In the small East Flemish villages inhabited by non-actors, where the story takes place, one day, a vagrant shows up. The villagers say he has the evil eye. Mills burned and harvest cursed, they say. The man is cursed, by a deep sense of guilt, over something from the past that slowed down time.
De tweede politieagent: “Jean, hebt ge ze?” [het spel vertraagt]
– Herman Teirlinck, De vertraagde film (1922)
Het kwade oog occupies that small frozen moment between sound and silence. With an acute sense of what's possible in cinema, even more than in literature and theatre, Dekeukeleire applies what he had Eisenstein seen do to with his interpretation of Brecht's episches Theater (“epic theatre”).
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Zéro de conduite: Jeunes diables au collège [Zero for Conduct] (Jean Vigo, 1933)
Jan
24
International Day Of Eduction
The students on a rooftop, saluting as if part of an army. DP: Boris Kaufman.
“War is declared! Down with monitors and punishment! Long live rebellion! Liberty or death! Hoist our flag on the school roof! Stand firm with us tomorrow! We'll bombard them with rotten old books, dirty tin cans, smelly boots and all the ammo piled up in the attic! We'll fight those old goats on commemoration day! Onward!”
– Tabard, one of the students
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Grand Hotel (Edmund Goulding, 1932)
Jan
8
World Typing Day
Despite Flaemmchen – Joan Crawford in her breakout role – is introduced as a “little stenographess”, that's clearly a typewriter on her desk. DP: William H. Daniels.
“Grand Hotel… always the same. People come, people go. Nothing ever happens.”
– Flaemmchen
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Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Frank Capra, 1939)
Jan
6
National Smith Day
Mr. Jefferson Smith (a squeaky young Jimmy Stewart) holds up a travel-guide of Washington, D.C. to Saunders (Jean Arthur). DP: Joseph Walker.
“The Chair recognizes… Senator Smith!”
– President of Senate